Buckle Up: There’s A Definite Decline Coming For The Guitar Gear Industry

Here’s a long essay on the tough year 2025 has been for guitar gear and why 2026 doesn’t look great either.

2025 has been nothing short of deflating for me as someone who covers guitar gear. More specifically, as someone who covers boutique gear and independent builders. They’re feeling the combined pinch of inflation (less spending money for customers) and tariffs (higher costs to manufacture). It’s not a political thing, it’s just an economics thing. It’s not a great time to try and sell expensive handmade guitar gear to hobbyists.

Never before in my nearly 8 years in this business have been hit with so many emails and dm’s from frequent collaborators saying ‘hey, demo and review content is just not happening this year’. Folks even at bigger companies are responding with notes about slashed budgets, slowed or paused production, and we’re already seeing some decent sized companies face uncertain futures. G&L Guitars seems poised to either reconfigure itself or be bought up. Washburn Guitars seems next up on the chopping block. The UK-based company John Hornby Skewes LTD that oversees several brands including Vintage Guitars and Godin Guitars is also folding and likely to sell off holdings.

There will be a lot of moving pieces in the coming months, and as I wrote in a recent feature on Ultimate-Guitar.com, I think the NAMM show next year is going to be very telling about who is doing well, and who is not. The bigger fish will always survive, and may even gain more of a market share as mid- and small-sized companies succumb to economic pressure. In fact, I have to imagine Fender is thinking about buying up G&L, right?

If you follow any smaller builders on Instagram, you’ve likely been flooded with notes on tariffs, rising costs, slumping sales, and persistent stress. This is not a friendly time for small businesses here in our music industry, so if you have the means to comfortably support your favorite brands, now is most certainly the time. Also not a bad time to help me out by subscribing, following, or using the affiliate links on my homepage (I got a wedding to plan!).

Even I’m Feeling It

I’m going to be brutally honest here, I’m having the worst year in a half decade when it comes to most representative stats. Clicks are down, affiliate commissions are down, gear coming in for review and demo content is way down. I had a great 2024 and I’ve been lucky enough to build some fantastic relationships in this industry, but it seems that the same logic applies here; the bigger fish on the gear circuit will outcompete us smaller folks, just as the Fenders will outlast the G&Ls. Now that’s not any shade to the real pros on YouTube and TikTok who genuinely put out great content, it’s just a bittersweet note.

A Coming Shift

Adapt or die. It seems that my worthwhile efforts to focus this website on smaller builders and brands may have to go on a brief hiatus. Unfortunately folks (or the algorithm) don’t seem to be so interested in that these days, as they probably aren’t shopping around the same way they have in the past. I’m juggling a few ideas, including getting into building my own pedals for fun projects and articles, as well as covering more affordable gear that’s available on Amazon or at Guitar Center. Not my preferred niche these days but the bills gotta get paid!

As sad as it may be to change directions, it also represents a lot of new opportunity to (finally) reimagine some of my content. While 2025 has generally been disappointing, 2026 will hopefully be a different but exciting time to explore other aspects of guitar and guitar gear. I will be making a concerted effort to also do more band interviews like my chats with SWMRS and Getdown Services. Despite the obvious hurdles, plenty of brands have still come out with some really incredible gear this year. So while the end of the year lists may be a bit more sparse than normal, the quality of the gear should still be really exciting!